The present disclosure is directed toward an apparatus and a method for creating and managing print job tickets and, more specifically, to a system that creates a print job ticket at a printing device, stores the ticket at a server, and receives a print job submission with a selection for the ticket at a mobile client device.
Direct printing is a type of printing workflow or path in which a client device is directly connected to an image forming device. In this manner, a print job request that is provided by the client device is sent directly to the image forming device for rendering a print output. In indirect printing, the client device is indirectly connected to the image forming device. Therefore, the print job request may be sent, for example, to a server, which relays the request to the image forming device.
There are two types of indirect printing workflows prevalent in the marketplace. A first type includes cloud printing, whereby a select image forming device may be specified for rendering a print job when the print job request is made at a remote client device. A cloud print service acts as an intermediary agent and forwards the job to the selected device. The second type of workflow includes pull printing (also referred to as ‘follow-me printing’), whereby the print job can be selected from a list provided on an interface at the image forming device. The list is provided by a print server, which sends the selected print job to the image forming device. Accordingly, both types of indirect printing workflows use a print service residing on a public or an internally shared server for receiving print job requests and relaying the requests to the image forming device.
These workflows are adapted to receive the print job requests from mobile client devices that have small user interfaces, such as, for example, smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and tablet personal computers (PCs). However, these existing devices are not adapted to select advanced, user-specified printing features. A small basic set of printing features is a limitation in the existing applications of these workflows. A workflow for managing print jobs is therefore desirable for enabling advanced print features to be selected using the hand held device.